Resources for Catholic Educators

Classroom Activities
on Saints

Below are a few suggestions of activities aiming
at helping students learn about Saints, identify with them,
and reflect on the role of saints.

Saints
Cards

Have the students
do a bit of research on one of their favourite saints.

Ask them to
make a Saints Day Card using either a 8X11 sheet of paper or construction
paper folded in half.

The top part
of the card could contain the name of the saint with a picture or drawing
representing the saint.

Inside, there
could be a brief biography of the saint and/or a prayer to this
saint written by the student. They could also explain why they have
chosen this saint - what do they find appealing about this holy
person.

On the back
of the card, ask them to draw a symbol that represents this saint.
Under the drawing, they could explain why they have chosen this
particular symbol.

Available
Resources

One option is
to print out and distribute the Patron
Saints Quiz answers. Follow the link above and scroll down
below. Below the 100 questions, you will find short biographies
of each of 100 patron saints.

Students can
read through these and select one saint for this assignment.

If students
have access to the Internet, you can direct them to some of the
web sites containing biographies of saints on our Site
Reviews - Saints page

If they do
not have access to the Internet, you could simply print a copy of
the biographies needed and hand them out to the students.

Patron
Saint Trivia Game

Copy, paste onto a word processor and print the short biographies
that constitute the answers to the Patron
Saints Quiz - (Follow the link above and scroll down below.
Below the 100 questions, you will find short biographies of each
of 100 patron saints.)

Divide the class
into groups of 3-4. Tell them that they will be getting information
on 100 patron saints and that they will participate in a trivia
game as a team. They will have 5-10 minutes to go through the information
before the game starts. Point out that because time is limited,
teams that co-operate in going through the information will do better
during the game.

Distribute the
patron saints biographies to the your students. When time is up,
tell them to put away their sheets and proceed with the game.

You could ask
questions from the Patron
Saints Quiz to each of the teams in turn, or you could take
the first student who lifts his or her hand. If you take the latter
option, you might want to give one point for right answers and take
one point away for wrong answers.

Patron
Saint Row Race

Copy, paste onto a word processor, and print the short biographies
that constitute the answers to the Patron
Saints Quiz - (Follow the link above and scroll down below.
Below the 100 questions, you will find short biographies of each
of 100 patron saints.)

The teams will
be made of rows of students - this could be done according to the
natural seating plan you have or according to one that you make
up for the occasion.

Tell the students
that they will be getting information on 100 patron saints and that
they will participate in a race to answer questions on these saints
afterwards.

Give the students 5-10 minutes to go through the information before
the game starts. Point out that because time is limited, teams that
co-operate in going through the information will do better during
the game.

Copy, paste onto a word processor, and print the 100 questions
of the Patron
Saints Quiz. Hand them out to the students face down on
their desks. Tell the students to wait for your signal to turn the
quiz over and to start doing it.

At regular intervals of 30 to 60 seconds, ask the students to pass
the sheet they were working on to the student in the desk behind
them. The last student walks up to the front and gives his/her sheet
to the student in the front desk. If students spot a mistake made
by one of their team mates, they can correct it. If need be you
can adjust the time between switches to extend or shorten the total
time.

Determine before you start the race how many times the students
will switch sheets. Once the race has started, keep track of switches
by making tally marks on the blackboard. When you have reached the
predetermined number, tell the students to put down their pencils

Ask the students in each row to write the number of their row on
the back of the quiz sheets (count the rows off so the students
know what number to write).

Have the students exchange copies with the row beside them. If
there is an uneven number of students in rows, some students will
be marking 2 quizzes. Uneven numbers of rows will also require that
one row exchanges copies twice.

Go over the answers so that the students can mark the papers they
have. Each correct answer is worth 1 point. Students then tally
the number of correct answers. Quickly go down each row asking students
to give you the score of the quiz(zes) they marked. Write these
scores on the board. Add the total score for each row and divide
by the number of students in that row (ask students to do the math).
The row with the highest average is the winner.

The advantage with this process is that it is both non-threatening
for individual students and yet appeals to their sense of competition.

A Saint for the 21st Century

Explain the following points to your students:

God is the one who calls people to become Saints;

Saints are people who love God and others - you can't seperate
one from the other;

Saints show their love for God by loving others;

the love that Saints have for others is an echo, a reflection
of the love that God has for others;

Saints find out how God is calling them to love by being attentive
to the needs of of people in the world they live in;

the lives of Saints tell us something about God: when God calls
certain people in certain situations to love in certain ways,
God is telling us what is important in God's eyes.

For example,
mother Teresa of Calcutta served the poorest of the poor, the dying,
the children who would otherwise have been abandonned or aborted.
If God called her to do this, what was God telling the whole world
through Mother Teresa? Possibly that even though the society of
the 20th century did not put much value on life, especially the
life of the most vulnerable and the most powerless, God did value
their lives. The ministry of Mother Teresa proclaimed this love
of God in the midst of what Pope John Paul II called the "culture
of death". The ministry of Mother Teresa was therefore both
a sign of God's love and a message to the world.

You could obviously
look at the lives of other Saints in this light. What was the "message"
of God to the world given through a Therese of Lisieux? a Saint
Francis of Assisi?

Each generation
needs to hear God saying "this is what I care about" -
"this is what I find important". One of the ways God does
this is through the persons God calls to sainthood.

If this is true,
God is calling people in our present time to be Saints. These 21st
century Saints will be God's answer to the needs of 21st century
people. What does our world need to hear from God today? What will
21st century Saints look like. What will these Saints do to love
others and to be a sign of God's love in our world?

Ask your students
to jot down possible answers to these questions? Ask them to share
their answers with the rest of the class.

Resource

"Saints
in the Supermarket" - a feature in the online edition
of the Saint Anthony Messenger - has a more extensive reflection
on sainthood which is similar to the one described above. It also
provides a number of links to online resources to facilitate this
reflection.

Depending on the level of maturity of your students, you could
extend this by asking them to answer the following questions:

God calls all of us to become Saints, to become signs of
his love to a world that has special needs. What can I do to
start answering that call? What can I do today to start loving
the people around me, to meet their need?

For this
purpose, you could print, photocopy one or the other of the
reflection cards available here.

Other Activities:

Meet the Saints - Name tags with brief biographies of some of the Church???s most beloved and well-known saints. Match the name tags containing biographies with the saint names. There are three more saint???s names than there are biographies. In the blank name tags provided, write an introduction for each of the remaining saints.